RISD Beach April 25, 2011

Recently a friend sent us a picture he had taken of the owlets in the Seekonk heron rookery. His photograph depicted the owls on a branch a couple of feet above the nest. We went to the rookery today hoping to find them out of their nest. Sadly when we arrived the owlets were not showing off their tree climbing capability and instead chose to stay in the nest. We noticed after a few minutes the adult, hidden behind a limb of a tree, on the nest. I moved my scope a few yards to the right and when I peered through again one of the owlets had gotten up and was walking, as best he could, on the nest (he was having some trouble moving since he was larger than the nest and his sibling was taking up a lot of room.) I noticed then that the bird that I thought was an adult Great-horned Owl was actually the chick that was currently standing up. He was molting into his adult plumage which would explain for the barred feathers I saw which I had mistaken for an adults breast feathers.

I thought I heard a Yellow Warbler in the woods but I was not sure. It may have been a Yellow-rumped Warbler. If it was a Yellow Warbler would have been a year bird.

We then went shoe shopping at Sports Authority where I spotted a pair of Northern Rough-winged Swallows.

Next we went for a walk at RISD Beach (I spotted a Wild Turkey on the side of the road wile driving to RISD). The Purple Martins had returned to their nest boxes and were flitting about everywhere with a few Tree and Barn Swallows mixed in.

On the marsh we had Great and Snowy Egrets, Red-winged Blackbirds, Common Grackles, Killdeer and Mallards.

The best birding was on the bay (not surprisingly). Mixed in with the large flocks of Red-breasted Mergansers were Horned Grebes and four Green-winged Teal. I was surprised to find the teals on the bay as they are not big fans of salt water and tend to prefer marshes and mud flats. In fact the only other time I have ever seen teal on open water was at Sachuest!

On the beach we had Brant and Sanderling along with the usual gull species.

I will post the blog posts about Cape May as soon as possible.

I just saw a bunch of Chimney Swifts flying over our house!